EVENT LOG: GRAVES

[inthenightmods]

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

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Comments

[chardismastic]

Yeah. [ Rafe finally glances up at his headstone, eyes drawn to the ship carved in stone. ] This place sure has a sense of humor.

[ It's the closest he'll get to the Fancy now, that's for certain. Doubtful his grave back home will be anything like this. Assuming the bodies were recovered, he can't imagine his family picking anything except the tackiest, most expensive monument they could find. The thought is sour in his mouth, twisting bitter. Almost wistful before he shakes his head and shifts the conversation elsewhere. ]

Yours went more traditional.

[nonscriptum]

Yeah, well. I am Irish Catholic. Originally, anyway.

[ Before Drake, when his surname was Morgan. They weren't religious about going to mass, but they went often enough that the responses have been drilled into his brain and remain, decades later after he stopped visiting churches for anything other than glorified grave-robbing.

Nate steps over his own grave, rubbing his fingertips against the weathered stone, scratching lichen from granite. The knot work is neat, made with care. It occurs to him that this place could have set his real name in the marker, but didn't. ]

They look like the headstones around the monks' quarters.

[chardismastic]

Certainly look old enough to come straight from St. Dismas. Give it a couple hundred years, could be someone stomps through them same as we were.

[ Rafe's gaze slants across Nate's back, along his arm to the marker before landing back on the tablet. It's the least dangerous option right now. His own grave is a bundle that he doesn't want to unpack right now; Nate's grave seems like it ought to be a private thing; and Nate is... Nate. ]

I saw his, you know. Bridgeman's. Not here, obviously. [ Briefly, anyway, in the brief moment between the dynamiting and the Drakes crashing their way to a seaplane. Not enough time for anything else. Fifteen years and still not enough. ] Guessing that was the clue inside the cross?

[nonscriptum]

[ He rubs his thumb on the stone, scratching off granules of rock that hit the tops of his boots. Nate follows their trajectory and looks down, catching sight of the marker's inscription again. Sir Francis Drake's motto stares up at him, carved in stone as though it means something, as though it isn't mocking him for never achieving the greatness he set out to find.

Nate came to terms with it himself, years ago: the knowledge that he had nothing to prove. It didn't matter, and neither does this. Nihil rebus. ]

It was the skull.

[ He says over his shoulder. ]

Needed to be turned in the direction of his sigil. That's when the stairs to the crypt opened.

[chardismastic]

[ The skull had been turned when he'd made his way to the dormitory, stone jaws open and laughing at him same as the Shoreliners Nadine had detailed him. At least the skull didn't bother to hide it.

He's silent long enough that maybe Nate thinks they're done but he finally breaks the silence, voice quiet enough for the impromptu graveyard sprung up around him. ]

...What was it like?

[ It may not matter to Nate, and maybe it doesn't matter period, not in the long run now that they are where they are, but Rafe can't let go of this just yet. He can't. Even if it's like prying his ribs out one by one to ask this of Nate. ]

[nonscriptum]

[ He turns, surprised by the question. Maybe he shouldn't be: after all, while Nate had packed up his sentiments and willingly buried them, Rafe kept digging. Kept searching, in a similar way to Nate's underlying desire to find what Drake was hiding, all those centuries ago. The only difference is that in the process, he learned that the search was tearing him to pieces, and there was something more worthwhile than being right.

Nate hesitates, assuming Rafe is talking about what led the brothers Drake to the chamber that Shoreline decimated with a single wrong move. Not seeing it firsthand, well, there's the same indignation Nate snapped at Sully when his oldest friend suggested he sit this one out. ]

There was this series of caves, accessed from the northwest cliff. Dozens of statues carved into the walls. A mechanism - like a water wheel - to arrange the three crosses in the right order and disable a door, this-

[ He sighs, reaching for his sketchbook, trying to remember it in better detail. ]

...It was cold. Avery'd built all these floor-to-ceiling columns in the basalt, these different...tests and bridges to determine if someone who was invited could find their way. A crewman of Byrnes' died down there. [ Nate pauses on a page, and his voice grows stronger in that latent excitement of the memory. ] The chamber was huge, the last test on a set of scales weighing coins against a gold cross. Greed. Something in the ceiling shifted and all this orange light just- poured onto the floor in the shape of Madagascar.

[ For a long moment he lets it sink in, turning slightly in Rafe's direction, weighing whether the spite of withholding what little he has is even worth it here. ]

I have drawings, if you wanna see them.

[chardismastic]

[ The hesitation drags itself out and Rafe swallows a curse. Stupid. It was a stupid fucking question to start with, doubly so asked of Nathan Drake who doesn't owe him a goddamn thing. Self-recrimination makes it feel longer than it's actually been before Nate answers, and the tension gearing up across his shoulders and in his clenched fists suddenly has nowhere to go.

He closes his eyes with a deep breath to try and better visualize as Nate explains. Better imagine the path taken down out of the graveyard (how many hours had he spent in that plot, sitting on headstones and almost praying for some kind of sign, any hint at all, what a waste) and under the cathedral.

Nate never had a way with words unless it was talking about stuff like this. Seems it still holds true as the enthusiasm catches, sets something aching in his chest. He would've given anything to just—

But then he's yanked out of his imagination by that offer, head jerking up in surprise, eyes owl-wide in the bonfire light. Rafe blinks in confusion because he can't think of a single reason why Nate would let him look, but then. He couldn't think of a reason why Nate actually let him have any of this in the first place. His jaw works for a beat, and another, and then he nods. Clears his throat. ]

...Yeah.

[ And he takes a wary step, just close enough to read over Nate's shoulder. ]

[nonscriptum]

[ Rafe looks at him as though his face has abruptly started to melt, and it escapes him as to why. The man never made any bones about the fact he wanted the brothers Drake out of the way and his partner, somewhat more liberal with her ordnance, didn't seem to mind blowing up everything in a ten mile radius to accomplish as much. Nate almost forgot how much Rafe cares about this stuff.

He has degrees and fancy paperwork, museum wings with his name etched into elegant, gleaming signage. The Adlers aren't philanthropists but neither are they a stupid hegemonic entity: donations to large institutions look good, and while he wouldn't classify Rafe as an archaeologist, he's more than a hobbyist. It might have actually pissed him off when Nadine's men leveled the cathedral.

He shifts in and Nate flips to the pages in question, starting with the upturned graves in the monk's quarters, and wordlessly pushes the book into his hands. ]

[chardismastic]

[ Nate owes him nothing. Hadn't ever before, certainly doesn't with where they are now, but here he is anyway handing the notebook off as if it were just a matter of course. Rafe almost drops it, struck again with the kind of stupid that can only stare, eyes traveling from the notebook to Nate and back again before he accepts it. A phantom memory of borax tickles his nose as he remembers Nate's knuckles wrapped white around the cross, trepidation on his face as he sighed in exasperation. May I? he'd had to ask then and only begrudgingly received. Not that he would've asked for this— Why bother when the answer's obvious?

His hands are careful as he exhales sharply, a quiet woosh of air as he scans the pages. He catches himself a scant second before his fingers touch the sprig of heather taped to the paper, glancing up at Nate for... He doesn't know. Permission? To apologize? Some reassurance that he's just looking, not out to rip it all apart? Whichever it might have been, Rafe keeps his fingers to the edges after that.

A huff of laughter escapes him at the conversation atop Golgotha, Getsas's two cents next to the righteous. Another at the cliffside of death traps. He shakes his head minutely before he flips back from a fast food receipt to the monks' final diary. ]

Just swanned right in and bought it up, huh. [ No, the irony is certainly not lost on him as he rubs a corner of vellum between thumb and forefinger. ] Avery certainly knew how to get things done.

[ He could spend hours with this and probably still not be satisfied but. He knows how Nate is with his these things. So he reluctantly closes it and hands it back. ]

For as far as it got him, anyway.